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Nov 30, 2006

Le arghle! I went on a sock-knitting binge tonight and attempted to finish my second pair of Socks of Doom, so they could possibly get sent tomorrow, but much to my dismay, my suspicions were correct ... I have like eight yards too little yarn. I'm in the middle of the toe decreases on the second sock and I've run out. Sheesh! I do have more of this type of yarn in my stash, so I can finish the pair tomorrow, but goshdarnit. I'd have liked to do it tonight. And the yarn in my stash is a different color than the yarn the rest of the socks are knit in, but I know that if I decide to rip out the toes and re-knit them in the same color of yarn, so the socks match, I won't end up finishing till after New Year's unless I have a fit of inspiration. So, my dear sock victim, you're going to have one interesting pair of socks coming to you soon. ;) I hope you don't mind too much, and I figure, if it bothers you enough, then you, too, are a knitter, and are fully capable of fixing this thing that bothers you and making all right with the world.

So tomorrow: Little Bit of Everything swap, the last of the Sock Wars, and spinning for my magic yarn ball. Then after that, it's solely catch-up and get-ahead.

Nov 29, 2006

Sent the Christmas tags and my Cold Weather Care Package swap today; the Little Bit of Everything swap should go out tomorrow, and then I am caught up! with everything except the Superlate list and the stuff for which deadlines are still upcoming. Whew! Must run and get ahead ... at last.

(Oh, and yesterday the Egypt ATCs and the Girly Box swap went out, along with the yarn that someone bought on Etsy. Laaa.)

And I dyed a handful (about 1.5 oz) of alpaca web last night in the leftovers from the ancient Brian yarn dyepot. Apparently there was more gray left in there than anything else, so the alpaca just came out darker than it was originally. I was going to card it anyway before I spin it, so any contrast will keep things more interesting, anyway...

Didn't get to the pasta machine or the sweater machine last night, tsk, tsk. That second catch-up day is looking more and more likely. Brian's birthday is Thursday, though, so I'm not sure when is a good day for it unless I stay here in St. Pete again tonight, which, while possible, doesn't sound very appealing. I suppose I'll just see what else I actually get done today before I really decide. Onward...!

Nov 27, 2006

I've finished all the required Christmas tags except for the fibers to tie them to the gift with, and I finally overdyed that 2 oz. of Merino roving I got from the dyeing exchange that was just sitting there because it was peach and I didn't feel like spinning peach roving. ;) It's now a variegated brown through reddish color, though I'm not sure of the exact color at the moment since the lighting in here isn't terribly good.

...anyway. Now I'm making some more Christmas tags to send along with some of the ever-so-slightly late (a couple of days barely seems to count, really...) swap packages I'll be sending soon. And if I'm really on the ball, some will go out with swaps from the slowly shrinking but currently still existent Superlate Swaps list. La.

Also to do tonight: play with the new pasta machine and the not-so-new but unused sweater machine.

It's catch-up day here in St. Pete, meaning today is devoted to doing as much as humanly possible to catch up with all the things I'm supposed to be doing/have done. (As a side note, I was eerily housewifely today: I left Brian fried rice for dinner, folded his laundry, and did the dishes for him. Wooeeoo! But that's because it's his birthday week and I want to do as many Nice Things as I can.) So far my catching up has been limited to some cleaning and reorganizing, and putting together my only very slightly late Girly Box Swap. Other swaps forthcoming as I zip through the day ... snailishly.

But in other news, I actually made a sale on Etsy! Whoa! Somebody bought the one skein of handspun yarn I had listed. Eep! I ought to actually list some more. ;) But that, like everything else, comes once I've caught up with the stuff I'm behind on. I may need to designate another catch-up day this week, but I Will Persevere! I'm still inconveniently tired, which slows things down, but ... I suspect my world will speed back up once I'm not bogged down by having to do eight million things for other people.

Whew! Off to package some yarn, eat, then do some of that snailish zipping. ;D

Nov 15, 2006

My puzzle pieces are finally finished! I am evilevil for taking so long, but at last they'll get sent to their respective owners. I hope they're well loved. :D Piccies (themes from top to bottom: Vintage, Provence and Tuscany, Abstract Art, and the 1960s):

Now that my fleece is washed (woo!) and I have one infamously delayed puzzle piece completely done, I thought I'd take a quick break from doing eighteen things at once to check what kind of knitting needles I am. And voila! See? I really am quicksilver. ;D

What kind of knitting needles are you?

You are "turbo" charged.Fast moving and classy, you get things done with power and grace. Your expensive tastes can be deceiving, since what you really value is quality and efficiency. As you're careening around those corners in life, finishing a dozen knitted objects each month, stop and smell the roses. Don't miss the beauty of process!Take this quiz!

Nov 14, 2006

Finally finished the first sock in the second Pair of Doom and have cast on the second. Huzzah! (Special thanks to the Central Florida Pirate Festival for donation of extra huzzahs.) I also finished knitting my yarn ornaments today, and received three Ancient Egypt ATCs in the mail. Maybe having a conversation about The Mummy and listening to the soundtrack in the car today was somehow connected to my snail mail inbox karma...

Am currently working on the second sock in the second pair of Socks of Doom. Go, sock assassin, go!

Nov 13, 2006

As always, not quite caught up with my to-do list, but mild feelings of self-shoulder-petting still exist, since the "what I'm behind on" list isn't as bad as it has been in the past. For my own sake, I update! To do, not necessarily in this order:

*Sew TJ shirt*Knit bunny slippers*Bead ornaments*Spin two-ply Columbia yarn, package up one lock of wool and one ounce of roving to send for swap*Write grunge style article (technically not a crafty thing, but it's going on this list anyway because it needs to be done)*Finish puzzle pieces [and send them]*Make Christmas tags [and send]*Make Ancient Egypt ATCs [and send]*Buy white fabric for TJ's shirt*Buy pink or dyeable-to-pink yarn for Dave's bunny slippers*Decide which pattern to use for Dave's bunny slippers*Finish first Sock Wars sock in second Pair of Doom and cast on the second sock[1]*Yarn ornaments*Wash Columbia fleece

There's more technically on the to-do list than that, but, er, yes. ;) This is sort of a condensed reminders list to fill in the gaps in my memory where they're likely to occur, rather than an official to-do list. (And how much do I not want to psych myself out by listing a dozen tiny tiny things that will take me two minutes to finish, alongside the things that will take me two hours? ;))

I received a lovely three-ATC RAK from Teresa on Eccentric Pastiche today, huzzah huzzah. And I sent my dishcloth exchange swap -- gasp! -- before the deadline today! Photo of what got sent:

And whoa. I just got made maintainer of the fortrade Livejournal community. That was quick. ;) Hopefully that means a (re)new(ed) trading community will be coming to a Livejournal near you quite soon. :D

Nov 9, 2006

The dear Brian made me stay home and rest several days last week (well, he encouraged me strongly enough that I managed not to neglect myself completely, anyway ;)), so as a result I didn't get a whole lot done, buuuut ... updates!

Sock Wars! Turns out I'm in the top 105 remaining sockly assassins! Pretty funny, that. ;) As for my current deadly pair of socks, I'm on the toe decreases on the first sock. I know, I'm being slow ... but that's what happens when I have to make two costumes as well as knit, and then I get sick on top of it. ;)

Pirate Fair costumes: I have Brian's pants done except for the bottom drawstrings. Considering that's one costume piece out of six, it sounds like a rather pathetic tally, but! (It's the infamous Costume Hell Week "but." ;)) My own pants won't take very long, since I'm allowed to fudge things on my pants I won't fudge on his; and if I have to, I can make him a half-an-hour shirt rather than the pretty one with gussets I really want to make. And if he has to, technically he can wear the vest I don't like. It's even the right color on the inside -- almost the same color as the new vest I'm making him, that is. That just leaves my bodice-type thing and my own vest. The thing that's really keeping me from doing my own costume at the moment is fabric. It's down to the wire and I still don't really know what colors I'm using for which pieces of my costume. Doh!

And do you know, it would be a lot easier to finish these costumes Lickety Split if my sewing things were all at Brian's, instead of forty-five minutes away. ;) Oh, and not that this is craft-related, but my new snake charmer pipe got here today and it's whoa bigger than the first one ... and also whoa more functional. Hurrah! Now I have to learn to play it semi-decently in a week. ::rolls eyes::

Breed Swap: My raw Columbia got here yesterday (I think it was yesterday; I didn't go by the house and check my mail then, so it could have been today, but who on earth cares but me? ;)), so now I have the roving to spin and divide as well as the raw fleece to take locks from. All that remains is to wash and dry the fleece, pick out some locks, spin a few yards of yarn, and package everything up. Not too much trouble. (Though again, it would help if my craft stuff were at Brian's, or alternately if I were in the same vicinity as my craft stuff, wherever that happened to be. Mumble.)

No progress worth reporting on anything else I can think of. Swap ornaments to go out this week, dangit! To do tonight, then:

*Take measurements for Brian's shirt*Cut pieces for Brian's shirt*Possibly hand-sew Brian's shirt (since this is doable and some parts will have to be hand-sewn anyway), depending on how much time I have in the evening*Get fabric for my costume*Wash and dry fabric for my costume*Make myself a pair of pants?*Finish knitting and stuffing yarn ornaments*Get beads for bead ornaments*Finish one Sock Wars sock and cast on the second

It's really not that much, but the trouble will be remembering it all ... hence noting it here. ;)

Then tomorrow, these things must be done if they haven't been already...

Nov 1, 2006

While looking for info on the uses of Jacob wool, I came across a reference to the "bra test" -- which is apparently when one knits a swatch out of the yarn to be tested, and puts it in one's bra for a day to see how one's skin reacts. (For those of us with small breasts, this could also be called the "stuff your bra" test. ;) Or maybe the swatch in question is meant to be quite teensy?) Anyway, I like the idea. I'll have to try it someday. ;D

No pics yet, because I'm too lazy/impatient (mercurial, to stick with my blog name, ha ;D) to arrange things nicely for a photo, but my roving for the Spindlers Breed Swap came in today, along with a binge box of stash-hopping fibers -- meaning they came from someone else's destashing and are now part of my stash. ;D There's a gray spinning bell, some Jacob roving, some random white domestic wool roving, and some Merino roving -- I've never had a spinning bell or Jacob wool before, so this was partly an experiment for me, and partly I'm going to be dyeing some things that I don't have to process by hand first. Yay! I want to play with my fluffies! But I must continue to madly knit on my current pair of death socks first...

Pics of them, anyway. I'm being dumb and posting two pics, one because I think it's prettier, and the other because, er, I feel the need to post a picture that shows the mittens slightly more clearly than the pretty one?

Pretty:

"Clear":

Am almost done with one leg of my Socks of Doom. Should have gotten more done last night, but, well, life is full of shoulds. ;D